Flying Children

The picture above was taken during our trip to a fishing villiage called Chachahuate (pronounced as: cha-cha-WAT-hey, you don’t even want to know how badly I spelled it before I checked the correct spelling) . Chachahuate is a tiny cay off of a small island chain called the Cayos Cochinos, which is inhabited by the Garifuna people, who, long story short, are the decedents of African slaves who were either shipwrecked there, or rebelled and ended up there, depending on who you ask. The island took me less than 10 minutes to walk around, and has no electricity. Upon arrival, the island looks like something out of an adventure movie, with thatch roofed huts all along the beach, fisherman in weather-worn boats coming and going, and children running everywhere. one of these children happened to be David, who is pictured above (no pun intended). Our time with the Garifuna was spent with a doctor, who we helped weigh babies and teach basic CPR. We also spent some time teaching the people basic english, and entertained the children (by throwing them into the air of course.) Needless to say, it was a great week.

Yesterday was my 21st birthday. To celebrate, we went into town with some friends and had burritos in an area that had most of the tourist restaurants and bars. After dinner we went to a place that had a live band…and, well…lets just say I danced with more old tourist women than an Elvis impersonator in Vegas.

As for whats been going on in the past couple of weeks:

Last week our speaker was a guy named Jeff Pratt, Jeff works with YWAM Axiom in New Haven Connecticut and is doing some amazing stuff there. The teacher for the week was on, “Father Heart of God”, which was a ton of stuff about God’s character, and how that ties into life…and that was something that I definitely needed.

The week before that our Base Director Chris Toney spoke, with the theme being worldview, talking about everything from Darwinism to Mormonism. It was good just to gain more knowledge about those worldviews, and in the process learn alot more about my own. Coincidentally, I had just picked up Charles Colson’s “How Now Shall We Live?” which is a 550 page monster of a book dealing with worldviews. So it was a very informative week!

The week before that a woman named Dina Beck came and spoke about spiritual gifts and how God desires to use our individual gifts to the best of His, and our abilities. It was a ton of fun taking the tests and all that (although I’ve always been a little skeptical of those things). Unfortunately, I do not have the gift of healing, buuuuut, it does appear that I have the gift of throwing children.

All in all its been a great couple of weeks, alot different than I expected, but exactly what I’ve needed (God has a way of doing that doesn’t He?) Tomorrow we are headed up to Port Royal, which, in case you were wondering, is the same Port Royal from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

Thanks again for all of your prayers and support! I’d love to answer any questions that you might have!

3 Responses to “Flying Children”

Luka!
So much fun reading your blog! That island sounds amazing. In History with Copeland, we’re learning alot about the slaves and where they were taken and stuff in the Americas, its cool that you are down there witnessing the effects of history, though i suppose we all are 🙂
Keep up the good work! And that picture for sure remindes me of Noggen, tottally saw him last year, i think he will eventually grow into his head hahaha!
Talk to ya later
Michelle